David Guindon, a 52-year-old San Bernardino resident, holds a picture of his lost Husky Zeus on Tuesday, Feb. 6. Guindon had microchipped the Husky, but a Lake Elsinore woman now has it and her family has bonded with the pet. Photo by James Carbone, contributing photographer

Zeus is a smart dog — so smart that the blue-eyed, male husky can open doors.

That may be why he vanished from David Guindon’s San Bernardino home in May 2016. It may also be why he apparently bounced from home to home after that, before a Lake Elsinore family found and grew attached to him.

Thanks to his foresight to microchip the dog, Guindon was alerted to Zeus’ new location, but has learned the chip isn’t enough legally to prove he’s the owner. Police and animal control officials say they lack the legal authority to seize the dog. And Zeus’ new family doesn’t want to give the dog back, leaving Guindon disappointed and unsure of his next step.

Guindon, 52, had had Zeus for three years before the dog disappeared.

Guindon purchased a puppy from a local breeder after he had a stroke, and had just returned from a rehab center. He was lonely, he said.

“I thought, ‘You know what — I’d like to get a dog,” Guindon said.

He recalled that a childhood friend had a husky. “And they were so cool,” he said.

“Zeus was smart,” he said. The dog did high-fives, turned lights on and off and opened doors.

Then in May 2016, Guindon noticed that his front door was cracked open a bit at the time and the dog was missing. He was devastated.

“It was like losing a child, losing your son, or your kid getting lost in a store,” he said.

Guindon searched daily, spoke to neighbors, even “bought a megaphone and … went around in the early evenings yelling his name out.” And he had had the foresight to microchip the dog. But there was no sign of Zeus.

David Guindon, 52, of San Bernardino, holds a flyer he made for his lost Husky named Zeus at his home in San Bernardino, CA., Tuesday, February 6, 2018. David Guindon who microchipped Zeus, then lost the Husky, is trying to get Zeus back after learning that he was in the possession of a Lake Elsinore woman. Zeus is a 3 year old, male Siberian Husky with black and white markings. (Photo by James Carbone for the Riverside Press Enterprise)

Dog pops up – in Lake Elsinore

Until a few weeks ago.

Just before Christmas, he said, the microchip company called, saying a Lake Elsinore woman was trying to re-register the dog and asked if he would consent.

“I said absolutely not.”

Guindon is now trying to get the dog back, but is running into roadblocks that underscore the advantages and limitations of the popular, and recommended, practice of microchipping.

Guindon said he has been told he must file a civil suit to recover the dog and is looking into that. But he plans to give it a little time before going to court to see whether the person with the dog will return it voluntarily.

“I don’t want to put anybody through that,” he said.

He tried consulting police in Lake Elsinore and San Bernardino, and a Wildomar animal shelter, but they say they can’t just go get the dog.

That’s because the issue of whether a microchip record is proof of ownership is “a really tricky legal question,” said Katie Lisnik, director of public policy for companion animals, for the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States. Lisnik said it doesn’t help that there are few laws on the books, and hardly any case law, to shed light on the matter.

“It really is uncertain right now,” she said.

Microchip doesn’t prove ownership

It’s a tough question, too, said Raphael Moore, an attorney in Davis who serves as general counsel for the Veterinary Information Network, an online group that serves 70,000 veterinarians internationally.

“It’s a minefield,” Moore said. “It’s an emotional heart string pulling in every possible direction. Usually everybody has good intentions.”

However, he said, “Microchips do not equate with ownership.”

David Guindon, 52, of San Bernardino, holds a picture of his lost Husky named Zeus at his home in San Bernardino, CA., Tuesday, February 6, 2018. David Guindon who microchipped Zeus, then lost the Husky, is trying to get Zeus back after learning that he was in the possession of a Lake Elsinore woman. Zeus is a 3 year old, male Siberian Husky with black and white markings. (Photo by James Carbone for the Riverside Press Enterprise)

Moore said a microchip registration is no more proof of ownership than, say, a collar and a dog tag that has the owner’s name and contact information.

“It doesn’t mean it is your dog,” he said. “It just means that you printed a dog tag.”

But, he said, a microchip record is “a piece of evidence” that can be used in conjunction with other facts to help build a case for ownership and a pet’s eventual return.

Should dog be returned?

“We have no legal authority to retrieve the dog,” said Neil Trent, executive director of the organization that operates the Wildomar shelter.

“It appears that this woman did try to register the dog and was told that it had already been tagged to a previous owner,” Trent said. The shelter did not identify the woman and attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.

“In this situation, we would hope that common sense would prevail,” he said.

Guindon said he is frustrated by the response he has received and doesn’t understand why authorities won’t just go get the dog.

David Guindon, a 52-year-old San Bernardino man who microchipped his dog, then lost the husky, is trying to get “Zeus” back after learning that he was in the possession of a Lake Elsinore woman. (Courtesy photo)

Monique Middleton, chief animal control officer for Animal Friends, said things would have been different if the dog had arrived at the shelter. Officers’ practice is to scan arriving animals and return them if there is a microchip record of an owner, she said.

That’s not what happened in this case.

According to Guindon’s phone conversation with the woman, whom he said gave her name only as “Shawnee,” the dog had bounced between homes “because he got out so much.” Guindon said she told him a next-door neighbor couldn’t handle the dog and gave it to her, and she didn’t want to give the dog up because it had bonded with her son.

“We would be looking at something different if the dog was stolen,” Middleton added. “But at this point, the dog was lost.”

State law mandates that if someone finds property, including domestic animals, the person is obligated to “within a reasonable time, inform the owner, if known and make restitution without compensation, except a reasonable charge for saving and taking care of the property.”

The dog, Guindon said, was microchipped through the company HomeAgain. In an emailed statement, the company declined to comment on the situation, saying, “the proper authorities will work with the two parties for resolution.”

Trent sympathized with the person who has the dog.

“It’s bonded with her family, and maybe that’s why she is not willing to surrender it,” he said.

“We would strongly encourage that the person with the dog, no matter how long they have had it and how much they love it, it should go back to its rightful owner,” Welsh said. “That’s the right thing to do.”

Dave is a general assignment reporter based in Riverside, writing about a wide variety of topics ranging from drones and El Nino to trains and wildfires. He has worked for five newspapers in four states: Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and California. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Colorado State University in 1981. Loves hiking, tennis, baseball, the beach, the Lakers and golden retrievers. He is from the Denver area.

Jeff Horseman got into journalism because he liked to write and stunk at math. He grew up in Vermont and he honed his interviewing skills as a supermarket cashier by asking Bernie Sanders “Paper or plastic?” After graduating from Syracuse University in 1999, Jeff began his journalistic odyssey at The Watertown Daily Times in upstate New York, where he impressed then-U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton so much she called him “John” at the end of an interview. From there, he went to Annapolis, Maryland, where he covered city, county and state government at The Capital newspaper before love and the quest for snowless winters took him in 2007 to Southern California, where he started out covering Temecula for The Press-Enterprise. Today, Jeff writes about Riverside County government and regional politics. Along the way, Jeff has covered wildfires, a tropical storm, 9/11 and the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino. If you have a question or story idea about politics or the inner workings of government, please let Jeff know. He’ll do his best to answer, even if it involves a little math.